fallacies of worship

So I got an email yesterday from an acquaintance.

We used to go to church together. The church we used to go to is boarded up now, and the remnants who remained of that place joined up with another church in town.

He emailed me this new church's e-blast electronic update.

"This Sunday...November 19th! The Worship Band & Praise Team, along with the Choir will bring us to the throne room for worship with great worship songs and hymns."

Oh, really?

I/we will be in GOD'S THRONE ROOM upon hearing your band and choir?

Um, have you ever heard the term "sensationalistic"?

What about Jesus is sensationalistic? I'm really curious to know how and when He is more sizzle than steak.


But it's not just this...which is pathetic in and of itself.

This flat out reeks of Old Testament.

God in a building. God in a brick & mortar. God in a place.

Was the veil of the Temple not ripped in two when Jesus died? It obviously shouldn't have been, huh?

Why does anyone bother to sing "Emmanuel"? Seriously.

I guess Jesus was just blabbing to hear himself talk in the latter chapters of John. All that nonsense about the Holy Spirit, saying "I'm leaving but am sending someone else in my place, and He'll be here with you since I'm going elsewhere.


What if I were to say that the chair you're sitting in as you read this is holier ground than that place you go to every Sunday?

Have you ever pondered that God is no less with us when taking a diarrhea dump than when we're singing praise songs in a brick & mortar building?

We are no more nor less in God or He in us changing a diaper, cleaning up vomit, befuddled by homework, folding clothes, held up in traffic, etc than when we're doing any type of acknowledged ritual or activity pertaining to God.

But alas, this is yet another reason why I dislike this time of year. Not for the good that happens, but rather for the largely lived view that this is a "special" time of year.

People are more giving, more patient, more this, more that for one month a year than the other eleven.

There's "extra" good that happens this time of year than the rest. Not bashing that. Rather, why is it one month out of twelve?

The message I get from this is that I put on a mask for a month then go back to what else I was doing for the rest of the year. Pretty much like people put on a mask for two hours on a Sunday morning and then are otherwise the rest of the week.

I saw a church marquee a few months back that said part-time faith is not good. Well, no shit. But that's not what I'm seeing when I look around.

To have some church send me an email proclaiming I'm going to be spellbound if I'm inside their door this Sunday is a bunch of bull.

That reminds of yesterday. I was out near a mall, and there was a group of folks hanging out at the stoplights with buckets and Santa hats and going from car to car with their damn cheshire grins plastered to their faces.

What went through my mind was "are you going to be back out here in March, or June?"

I am so effing tired of the Way being portrayed as this "some times and places and events are more godly and/or put us closer to God than others" bullshit.

Another part of the disgust is the permeating notion God resides "more" in pleasant, positive, uplifting, nice, attractive, approved, obvious, spotlighted places than in subtle, ugly, unnoticed, plain, unglamorous, rejected, unobvious ones.

God is not in a lot of places He's said to be, and in a lot of places He's said not to be.